


The Island of Misfit Toys

by NinthFeather



Category: Gundam & Related Fandoms, Gundam 00
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Humor, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Child Soldiers, F/M, Families of Choice, Fic Titles Derived From Song Titles, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Imprisonment, Introspection, Memories, Metaphysics, Moral Debates, Multiple Selves, One Shot Collection, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romantic Angst, Sickfic, Slice of Life, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, past human experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 14,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinthFeather/pseuds/NinthFeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Celestial Being is the spacefaring version of the Island of Misfit Toys; they change the world anyway, and it's up to everyone else to navigate the fallout.</p><p>A Gundam 00 oneshot collection, in the process of being reposted from FFN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Island of Misfit Toys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil Dylandy sees the beauty in broken things.

When Neil Dylandy joined Celestial Being, he hadn't realized that he was, in a sense, marooning himself on the spacefaring version of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Sure, he'd expected his new co-workers to have some issues. After all, pretty much the only reason anyone would join Celestial Being was that they'd been hurt, somehow, by war. But the truth far exceeded his expectations.

There was a fine line between "damaged" and "broken" and his new comrades, especially his fellow Meisters, made their homes on it. They were not just hurt, he realized, they were seconds from falling apart.

This realization became a conviction as he watched them and worked with them. He could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, because he was the only one who had noticed just how fragile the other Meisters were. And thus the only one truly looking out for them.

Setsuna was always a few reminders of his past away from a total emotional shutdown. Tieria was obsessive and irritable about Celestial Being's plans because he didn't have anything else, and hid his insecurity by acting superior. And Allelujah-well, in some ways he was the worst off, because he seemed so normal on the outside that no one noticed the constant battles raging in his mind.

Neil tried-never let it be said that he didn't. He tried everything he could to bring them closer together, to cheer them up, to give them strength. But it never quite seemed to be enough. No matter what he tried, he couldn't fix them.

It made sense, after all. He was a sniper, not a counselor. He destroyed, he didn't build. Sometimes, he didn't understand why he tried at all.

But he couldn't help it, because below Setsuna's hardened exterior, there was an exceptionally good, selfless kid. Without his icy façade, Tieria was genuinely intelligent and surprisingly gentle. And Allelujah had untapped depths of kindness and compassion that he hid from the world, lest someone get close enough to him to also encounter Hallelujah. He could see the beauty in the broken toys, and he wanted to fix them up so that everyone else could see the same things he saw.

And besides, he knew he was just as broken as they were, only better at hiding it, better at coping. But he had maturity and experience that they didn't have, and that they might never gain, depending on how well their battle went.

He didn't want to think about that possibility, though. He didn't mind the idea of dying himself, but the thought of any of the others dying now both terrified and saddened him. If Setsuna never got to do anything other than fight, if Tieria never had a chance to let anyone in, if Allelujah never lived long enough for time to face the guilt Neil knew he felt every time he participated in an armed intervention…the world would never know what it lost. It would never even mourn them. They were the wreckage of humanity's mistakes, dismissed by a world that wanted to forget that such people existed.

If they hadn't been asked to shoulder the burdens they'd been given, what might they have become? He could imagine Allelujah as a teacher at an elementary school, letting the kids call him Mr. H. because they couldn't prounounce Haptism. Tieria would have made an excellent IT expert or computer programmer. Neil could picture him muttering insults at some computer novice while he fixed their hard drive. Setsuna…well, he hated to admit it, but he couldn't really picture Setsuna in a normal civilian job. Maybe he could have been a police officer or a security guard, though. Maybe he would have smiled more. Maybe they all would have smiled more.

If he needed a reason to hate the world, besides the death of his family, then these three were it. A world that couldn't even recognize how wonderful the other members of his little misfit family were didn't deserve to exist.

But maybe, someday, it would. That, as much as peace, was what he was fighting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-read by StormyMonday.


	2. gather all your tears, keep 'em in your pocket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feldt Grace comes into her inheritance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers ahead for Feldt's backstory, the end of the first season and the beginning of the second.
> 
> This isn't a songfic, exactly, but the title is taken from The Band Perry's "If I Die Young," and that song was a large part of my inspiration for this fic, especially the line used in the title. Thanks to StormyMonday for beta-reading!

~ _gather all your tears, keep 'em in your pocket~_

In stories, the orphaned heroine often carries around a photograph or constantly wears a locket because "it's all she has left of her parents."

All Feldt Grace had left of her parents was Celestial Being, so she wrapped it up in quiet promises and the last remnants of her heart and put it in her pocket.

An armed organization isn't like a locket or a photograph. It's a lot heavier and much trickier to hold onto. Taking care of it requires more than being careful not to bend it, or making sure to polish it every few years. Feldt learned all of these things as time passed, but still she held on to her one-and-only inheritance.

But she couldn't hold on to it forever, because there's one more thing that makes an armed organization different from lockets and photographs. Armed organizations are made up of people, and people change, and people leave.

Celestial Being was no exception. Some of the people changed quickly, others slowly, a few not at all. Some of the people left by accident, others on purpose. Some died, some gave up, some wandered away. Some came back. Some didn't.

Even Feldt changed. She changed from a quiet, shy, mousy girl to a strong, reliable young woman. She loved and lost. Her best friend died. But she remained. Not unchanged, but certainly unmoving. She stood by Celestial Being, without fail.

Not because it was all that she had left of her parents. The Celestial Being they had left her was gone, lost somewhere between the appearance of the Gundam Thrones and Lockon's death. What was left was a new Celestial Being, one that Feldt and her comrades had rebuilt from the fragments of the old with little more than determination. This Celestial Being wasn't her parents'. It was hers.

Feldt doesn't carry anything around in her pocket anymore. She has what she needs, in her mind and her heart; memories and ambitions, knowledge and emotion, and, above everything, the other things her parents left her, the ones she didn't even realize that she had until her first inheritance, Celestial Being, was falling to pieces around her.

Feldt Grace's parents gave her dedication and persistence and loyalty, so she carries them around in all of her actions for the whole world to see.


	3. Kinue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what you didn't know about Kinue Crossroad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the stuff about Kinue's life before the series, besides her parents' deaths, is not canon at all and was made up completely by me.
> 
> Thanks to StormyMonday for beta-reading!

Kinue Crossroad wasn’t nearly as old as most people thought she was when she and Saji’s parents died.  Fortunately, she was one of those people who always looked older than she was, so no one questioned it when she decided to raise her brother herself.

She made it through college on scholarships and prayers—no time for a job, with a grieving teenage brother at home.  She was his mother, his sister, his best friend and his diary, all rolled into one.  Juggling his needs with her homework was no picnic, but she managed it, because she’d always been the strong one.

Actually, she remembered once when they were little kids and she was looking at some bugs she’d found under the picnic table and Saji—who should have been just at the age to love bugs and other gross things—started crying when she tried to show them to him.  Saji had always cried easily as a kid.  Scraped knees, lost toys, just about anything was a reason for him to start sobbing.  He was just so sensitive.

Maybe that’s why she sheltered him so much.  She worked her butt off to send him to his school, but she made sure he never realized.  When she spent a year on the crime beat at the paper and woke up from nightmares of corpses, she didn’t let herself scream because he’d hear and he’d worry.  Heavens, he was good at worrying.  It had somehow replaced crying as his default mode.

He got a little better about the worrying after he met Louise.  Kinue had mixed feelings about her.  On one hand, she was pretty sure Saji actually loved her, and she really was good at cheering him up, or at least distracting him when he was upset.  On the other hand, she didn’t like how Louise manipulated her little brother, and, well, she was just so annoying sometimes!  She was always babbling about her clothes or whining or trying to talk someone into something…Kinue shuddered at the thought that she might have been so vapid when she was a teenager.

She had been a little flighty, she admitted, but nowhere near as bad as Louise.  She’d been a typical teen girl—a little too aware of boys and clothes—but more serious and studious than most.  She hadn’t taken any crap, either—she’d flat-out refused to be sucked into high-school drama or jerked around by the jock boys who thought they ruled the school.  She hoped there was less of that kind of idiocy at Saji’s school.

Once Saji was sixteen, she was able to worry about him a little less and focus more on her job.  It was a good thing, too, because that was about when the Celestial Being story broke and her investigation of Aeolia Schenberg started.

It was born of pure desperation, because they knew nothing about these people, and nothing is not enough for a journalist.  Aeolia Schenberg was their only clue.  But, as things progressed, it became more than just a quest for information about Celestial Being, because they got more useless data from each armed intervention.  No, what she wanted was the missing piece, the “why”.  She knew that, even if Celestial Being’s current members were serious about the whole “ending war by force of arms” idea, Aeolia Schenberg was a genius, and it didn’t make sense for him to have originated such a convoluted, impossible plan.  Celestial Being was doomed from the start, because a forced peace is no peace at all—it’s just another war waiting to happen.  At least, she’d seen it that way.  So what was it that Schenberg knew, but she didn’t?  She had to know.  She had to understand.  The world was being transformed by Celestial Being and people were afraid, because they didn’t understand either, and if Kinue could just explain it to them…maybe she’d make their lives just a little bit easier.

She’d never expected to die in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This version of the fic has been edited slightly for style and word choice based on comments received on Fanfiction.net.


	4. Hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This hurts like nothing Setsuna has ever experienced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an extremely subjective interpretation of this scene, and I don't have a lot of evidence to support it being correct. So, just think of it as speculation. 
> 
> Thank-you to StormyMonday for beta-reading.

There was a part of Setsuna that, despite the completely inappropriate situation, wanted nothing more than to laugh. It was a side-effect of his guerilla training, probably, that he could laugh under such circumstances. But there was something horribly amusing about the sheer irony of this situation, so much so that he nearly did laugh aloud.

Setsuna F. Seiei was a child soldier and a self-made orphan. He was also a Gundam Meister. If you named a traumatic experience, it was likely that he'd gone through it at one point or another. But this particular experience hurt like none of the others had, and it was happening in the middle of his own ship without an enemy in sight.

Bracing himself, he looked up. Lyle Dylandy's face, twisted by grief and anger, swam in front of his eyes as the other Meister drew back his fist to punch him again.

Setsuna wasn't going to complain. And he wasn't going to fight back. He knew how much Anew had meant to Lyle. In fact, from the moment he took aim at her Gundam, he'd known this would happen. He just hadn't expected it to hurt this much.

Not physically, of course. Lyle was a sniper for a reason-his hand-to-hand combat abilities were average at best. His technique, while not flawed per se, was very basic…and Setsuna was distracting himself with combat analysis again. Even _he_ knew that wasn't healthy as a coping mechanism.

What it came down to was this: Lyle looked like Neil, being that he was his twin. Setsuna, despite his best efforts to ignore Neil, had come to look up to the man and missed him greatly. As a result, the experience of being hit repeatedly by a person with the same face as Neil, and having to watch those green eyes fill with hate and know that all of it was directed at him-it was not a pleasant experience.

Lyle was not his brother. Setsuna knew this. He found that this fact did not really make him feel any differently about the situation, not because Lyle meant just as much to Setsuna as Neil had. He didn't. This wasn't Lyle's fault, of course. Neil had been the only thing standing between Setsuna and a mental breakdown for quite a while, and, moreover, he had willingly occupied that position despite Setsuna's brusque refusals of his help. He had been…he had been an older brother to Setsuna. Lyle was a comrade, a friend, and a good, reliable man. He was competent, had a good sense of humor, and Setsuna believed in his abilities as a Gundam Meister. But he didn't mean to Setsuna what Neil had meant to Setsuna.

No, this hurt for a different reason. Setsuna hadn't forgotten what Neil had told him about the bombing that killed his family. For a while, he knew, Neil really had hated him, or at least, the idea of him and the others who were part of Ali Al-Saachez's terrorist cell. At one time, Neil's eyes had held that kind of hatred for him. And even if Neil had forgiven him later on, the time when Neil had hated him still remained.

That was the part that actually hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been edited from its original form for style, albeit only in two or three places.


	5. Meanwhile, in Ireland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You meet all sorts of people in pubs.

Graham deserved to visit one of the local bars. There was no crime that he knew of, short of mass murder, perhaps, that warranted the sort of punishment he'd been subjected to that day. Honestly, was the language Billy and the other physicists used even English? Graham was pretty sure it wasn't.

Billy insisted that they couldn't go on vacation in Ireland without visiting the best biotechnology…or maybe nanotechnology…well, whatever it had been a lab for, Billy had insisted it was the best of its kind. And had proceeded to wander through it, speaking scientist-language with its strange, pale inhabitants for hours, with Graham in tow.

Finally, Graham decided to make good use of his extensive stealth training to sneak away from Billy and his utterly boring new friends After all, one never knew when such training would come in handy. After making his escape, Graham wandered the streets of Dublin for nearly a half-hour before finally deciding that a drink would do him a world of good.

Well, he supposed they were called "pubs" here, but Graham didn't honestly care, as long as they served alcohol. He wasn't exactly a big drinker, but he did enjoy an occasional beer, and it was hard to go drinking with Billy dogging his footsteps and muttering things about "depressants" and "liver damage". Graham was a soldier, for heaven's sakes! It was highly unlikely that he'd live long enough to die of something as mundane as liver damage.

Finally, he came upon an eligible-looking place. The sign was too worn for the words to be legible, but the picture on it was definitely a mug of beer.

He walked inside, brow furrowing as the smell of cigarette smoke stung the inside of his nose, and sat down at the bar.

He ordered something with a name he couldn't pronounce off of the menu—bravery was essential for a soldier, after all—and then noticed that the man next to him seemed to have taken specific note of his decidedly American presence.

Graham raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"I just wanted to know what a Union soldier is doing in Dublin," the man said casually. He was tall, easily Graham's own height, with curly brown hair that fell nearly to his shoulders and unusually sharp green eyes. A worn brown leather jacket rested comfortably on his shoulders, and there was a cigarette held between the first and middle fingers of his right hand.

Graham had nearly forgotten that he was still wearing his uniform. "I'm on vacation," he said quickly. "This was the only complete outfit I could find in my luggage."

The other man raised an eyebrow. "Not too organized, huh?"

"I guess not," Graham said with a laugh, noting absently that his drink had arrived.

"So, vacation is it?" the man asked. "How come you aren't in one of those 'Authentic Irish' tourist traps?"

"Honestly, I'm just here to escape the scientists," Graham said, taking a drink.

The other man gave him a sideways look. "You in some kind of trouble? I thought it was just the HRL that did that kind of stuff—"

"No, not like that!" Graham said quickly, waving a hand. "My best friend is a scientist, and he wanted to visit that big lab a few blocks from here…I cannot understand every other word they say."

"Sounds fun," the other man deadpanned. "Please tell me that's not the only thing you've done in Ireland so far."

"No, we already visited the Blarney Stone," Graham said. "I tried to kiss it, but Billy said I'd probably catch meningitis and die, and that I already had the gift of blarney, anyway."

"This Billy sounds like a piece of work," the man observed.

"He's my best friend!" Graham said indignantly before taking a drink. "And he's got a point…about the blarney thing, that is. I do tend to be a bit…overdramatic."

"Is that so?" the man asked.

"It's not really that unusual for a man to like Shakespeare, is it?" Graham asked.

"You quote him before battles," the man said. It was a statement rather than a question.

"Only sometimes!" Graham said defensively. "And not only Shakespeare. There are a number of Japanese writers…"

"You're pretty weird for a soldier," the man said with amusement.

"I am memorable," Graham corrected, trying to retain some dignity.

"You are that," the man agreed. "Hey, the name's Neil."

"Graham. It's nice to meet you."

Just then, the door of the pub slammed open and someone burst through it, silhouetted by the afternoon sunlight.

"Hey, has anyone seen a blond man in a Union uniform walking around? He probably looked either out of it, or drunk—oh, there you are, Graham!"

Neil turned, raising an eyebrow at the sudden commotion. "I'm guessing that's Billy?"

Graham grimaced and nodded as Billy approached them, looking rather murderous. "Yeah..."

"Where have you been?" Billy demanded.

"Uh, here," Graham said, gesturing to the surrounding pub.

"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving?" Billy questioned again, his tone clearly reflecting annoyance.

"I didn't want to interrupt your conversation with the weird scientist creat—the other scientists," Graham replied.

Neil snickered, but said nothing. He was more than happy to watch the entertainment provided by the two strangers.

"I'm sorry you were bored," Billy bit out. "But do you really think it's a good idea for you to walk around in uniform in a foreign country?"

"Uh…no?" Graham said, beginning to think he was in trouble.

"That's right," Billy said. "Now, come on. We have tickets for a concert tonight."

Grateful to have faced Billy's wrath and escaped with his life, Graham paid for his drink—even though he'd barely had any of it—and got up to leave.

"Maybe I'll see you around," Neil called to him as he walked out of the door.

"Perhaps," Graham agreed.

He didn't really think about that day much in the future, although, after Operation Fallen Angels, he almost wanted to go back to that pub and see if Neil was still there, just to reassure himself that one thing _hadn't_ changed.

If he'd only known, he probably would've appreciated the poetic irony of the whole situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This idea came from a review reply I sent to Laora…somehow, we ended up on the subject of what a meeting between Graham and Neil would be like. So, I wanted to write this. It's set sometime pre-series, I'm not sure exactly when, but after Graham joins the military and before Neil boards Ptolemaios. Graham is both hard and fun to write…I'm not sure how well I got his tone down, but I hope I did okay, because he's honestly my favorite besides the four original Meisters and Saji.
> 
> Beta-read by StormyMonday, and edited again before I posted it on AO3.


	6. Claustrophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allelujah spent his first week on Ptolemaios convincing himself that he wasn't trapped on the ship.

Allelujah spent his first week on Ptolemaios convincing himself that he wasn't trapped on the ship. He spent the second week convincing Hallelujah to stop reminding him that he couldn't exactly leave without dying of oxygen deprivation.

Claustrophobic wasn't the right term. Small spaces didn't bother him in the least…as long as he could leave them. It was being trapped that he was afraid of.

The scientists had trapped him in the institute. And Hallelujah, when he took over, shut Allelujah in a corner of their shared mind, refusing to let him out. Both experiences were equally unpleasant.

Unfortunately, spaceships were rather hard to leave at will. Allelujah was hyper-aware of this fact. And, yes, it bothered him. He flinched every time a set of doors shut behind him.

He wasn't naive enough to think it was a coincidence when, about a week into his time on Ptolemaios, he returned to his quarters to find Ian Vashti working on his door.

"It won't quite shut," the older man explained. "I just can't seem to get it the whole way closed. Is that going to bother you?"

Allelujah shook his head and babbled something about Ian trying later. Ian nodded patiently and went back to working on the Gundams.

Ian knew the door wasn't broken, and Allelujah knew it too, but both of them knew that, for all that he was a Gundam Meister and a super-soldier, Allelujah Haptism was also a man, and there were certain things that had more to do with pride than with honesty.

After a month on the ship, Allelujah's heart rate no longer spiked every time a door slid shut. In a moment of downtime, he quietly asked Ian to try fixing his door again.

It took Ian less than five minutes to get the door to close tightly.

After Ian left, Allelujah walked into the room and heard the doors close behind him, but now being enclosed felt more safe and comfortable than claustrophobic. Even super-soldiers knew the difference between a refuge and a trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first sentence of this fic needed to be written. I'm not yet sure why. I'm actually kind of surprised that there isn't more Parental Ian in fan fiction, given that he actually has a kid…oh, well.
> 
> Again, beta-ed by StormyMonday.


	7. Arguing with Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arguing with yourself is more complicated when there are two personalities in your head.

"I've rechecked this data five times, but there's this voice in the back of my mind that keeps insisting that there's something not quite right about it," Lichty groaned as he scanned the lines of text scrolling across the computer screen.

"Is that so?" Allelujah asked unsympathetically. At least Lichty's voice didn't have its own consciousness.

Well, then again, Hallelujah's single-minded, moral-disregarding drive to ensure their mutual survival probably didn't quite qualify as a consciousness, but it was close enough to give him the ability to act separately from Allelujah.

_What do you mean, I don't have a consciousness?_

Also, it was apparently close enough to give him emotions. They were pretty much limited to annoyance, anger, and sadistic glee, but at least he had them.

_You know, if you keep zoning out like this, he's gonna realize you're crazy._

_I'm_ not _crazy,_ Allelujah snapped. _You're a result of the quantum brain waves, not a breakdown or something._

 _No, you had the breakdown after the quantum brain waves,_  Hallelujah said, a mocking note to his unspoken tone.

 _Because you borrowed my body and went on a killing spree_.

 _So we could get out of the Institute,_ Hallelujah stated soundlessly. _You didn't want to be there, I didn't want to be there, so…I got us out. Why are you complaining?_

 _What part of killing spree do you not understand?_ _Those were human—_

 _You can't even honestly say that, not for certain, because you don't think you're human anymore_ , Hallelujah interrupted. _Besides, I don't really care if they were human. Our survival was more important._

_Who gives you the right to say that?_

_I do. I don't need anyone else's permission to exist. Unlike you, who's always trying to uphold imaginary moral standards and please people. Hah._

_They're not imaginary!_

_Can you prove that they exist? Not everyone follows them, that's for sure. Even you don't follow them half the time. You say you don't want to kill, but your little armed interventions aren't usually too peaceful._

_I only kill because it's necessary!_

_And who gives you the right to say that?_

"Uh, Allelujah?" Lichty said hesitantly, breaking Allelujah's train of thought. "You still in there?"

"Yeah," Allelujah said, forcing himself to be casual. "I was just arguing with myself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was taking an ethics class when I wrote this, by way of explanation. StormyMonday also beta-ed this chapter. 
> 
> ...In case you're wondering, I'm crediting the beta each chapter both because both of my betas for this fic were awesome, and because there were two of them who worked on different chapters.


	8. Attachments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoils Ms. Sumeragi's real name and pretty much nothing else.

Leesa Kujo…Sumeragi Lee Noriega…honestly, she wasn't sure which to call herself anymore, because even though the first one was her birth name, she'd become accustomed to being addressed as "Ms. Sumeragi," by the Ptolemaios's crew…but whichever one she was, what she was not was anyone's mother.

That much should have been fairly obvious to anyone who spent five minutes on Ptolemaios. She was not a role model. She spent half of her time drunk and the other half ordering other people to fight—and yes, there was a relationship between the two. Besides, she wasn't particularly good at taking care of people—especially the prickly, withdrawn types and the so-fake-happy-you'll-never-know-how-anything's-wrong types that seemed to populate Celestial Being.

Sure, she gave the occasional bit of advice, and offered encouragement every once in a while, and it wasn't like she didn't care about the others…but what it boiled down to was that she was not a reliable person, and she knew it. Anyone who relied on her would end up disappointed or dead, and that wasn't what she wanted for her crew or her Meisters.

And if she called them hers, well, that was just because they were. After all, it was her ability in giving them orders that determined whether they would live or die. That was the extent of her responsibility to them and their relationship with her.

Except that she knew very well that it wasn't. She cared about them as more than subordinates, and they cared about her as more than a tactical forecaster.

She wasn't anyone's mother. But she was Neil's friend and confidante, and Feldt Grace's mentor. She was Christina's co-conspirator in getting Feldt to lighten up, and Tieria's colleague—which seemed to be the closest relationship he'd grant anyone. To Allelujah, she was something of an older sister; to Lichty, she was a source of advice. And Setsuna trusted her, which was something he did not do lightly.

She was nobody's mother. But she did mean something to them, nonetheless. That scared her more than she could say, but it also made her a little happy. More importantly, it was a reality that she was going to have to deal with—after all, the only way to stop them from liking her was hurting them or letting them down, and she wouldn't do that.

She'd become Sumeragi Lee Noriega to run away from her old attachments. It just figured that she'd end up making new ones here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ms. Sumeragi is an interesting character. I decided to try and have a peek at her psyche.
> 
> Beta-ed by StormyMonday, re-edited for punctuation and character-name spellings (Gundam names are _so_ fun to romanize, am I right?).


	9. and then she caught herself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Louise Halevy wanted to tell Andrei Smirnov that she returned his feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of the not-really-songfics, and is constructed around a line from Paramore's song "I Caught Myself," with the pronouns and tenses altered to fit the fic.
> 
> If you don't know who Andrei Smirnov is, this fic is full of spoilers for you and you should not read it.

Sometimes, Louise Halevy wanted to tell Andrei Smirnov that she returned his feelings.

She didn't, of course—her heart was too full of hate and revenge to leave room for much else, and what little love she _did_ have still belonged to Saji—but sometimes, she wished she had.

It would be so much simpler. A fresh start, with someone who knew nothing of the cheerful, energetic girl she had been. She didn't have to pretend with him, the way she had needed to pretend with Saji in the hospital. Andre had fallen in love with her after she'd become the broken, worthless, confused excuse for a soldier that she now was.

The fact that he was able to see anything of value in the person she was now was remarkable. He looked past appearances. That was a good thing, in a man-her mother had said so.

But there were all sorts of things that weren't quite right about him. He was too tall. He wasn't a good cook. He didn't let her push him around. He never got nervous. His eyes were steely blue instead of soft brown. He never fell asleep at lunch tables.

In other words, he wasn't Saji. And even if she _knew_ that she'd never see Saji again, that he deserved better than someone like her…she couldn't quite let go.

Sometimes, Louise Halevy wanted to tell Andrei Smirnov that she returned his feelings. But she always caught herself before her lips formed the words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-read by StormyMonday.


	10. System Shutdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this was what it meant to have a past, Tieria didn't want one.

_If that man is being corrupted by the thing he calls a past, then he needs to purify himself with his own hands."_

Tieria had said that, once, during the intervention involving the HRL's Super-Soldier Institute. But now…now, he needed to take his own advice.

He hadn't really understood, then, why Allelujah's past was able to affect his actions. In fact, he hadn't really understood the idea of "having a past" until the few tense moments on that island, with Neil's gun pointed at Setsuna's head, had opened his eyes to what a human's past was.

He had always thought of a person's past as nothing more than a single aspect of a human's multifaceted operating systems, a few lines of the code that operated their brains which could easily be isolated and excluded from certain actions.

But a past was not a simple piece of code. It was a virus, a very well-designed virus, one that easily wormed its way into every aspect of their individual programs and could not be dislodged while they were still operating. It could impede or alter any or every process that they engaged in.

As soon as he realized that, he made a decision—if that was what it meant to have a past, he didn't want one. Celestial Being's members already had enough trouble without another person whose past caused malfunctions.

Unfortunately for that plan, Fallen Angels had occurred. And Tieria had been left with this brand-new emotion that Sumeragi referred to as grief.

While he was not sure it constituted a past, per se, it seemed to possess similar destructive capabilities to one. His function was not just impeded, it was all but eliminated. He just wanted to lose himself in Veda and forget everything…but he didn't even have the ability to do that anymore, not with the link to Veda gone.

When he had spoken of Allelujah's past, he had said that his fellow Meister was being "corrupted" by it. "Corroded" might have been a better word, however, because this felt like slow, steady degradation, consuming him from within.

But even if that was true, even if that was how he felt, he had no excuse. Neil had lost people too, and he had gone on living and fighting and being more cheerful, most of the time, than he had any right to be.

Tieria wasn't sure he could achieve the former Lockon Stratos's levels of geniality. But perhaps he could settle for working to regain his ability to function at a normal level.

Yes, if he himself was being corrupted by this thing he called a past, then he, too, would purify himself with his own hands. That was what it meant to be a Gundam Meister.

Tieria suspected that was what it meant to be a human, as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tieria has always one of my favorite characters but he was a pain to write back when I did this fic. 
> 
> This was beta-read by StormyMonday and then edited again for spelling before being posted here.
> 
> On a separate note, I would love to see a list of all the things that Gundam characters from all the various time lines have proclaimed to be "the meaning of being a Gundam/Gundam pilot/Gundam Meister/etc.," just because I think it would be a long, diverse, and rather amusing list.


	11. Just Plain Marina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's strange, how just plain Marina can do more for him than the Princess of Azadistan ever could.

His expression is almost soft when he's asleep. She wouldn't call it happy, really...the corners of his lips are still pointing downward rather than up…but it's a gentle expression, for certain.

Dark eyelashes rest lightly on his cheek, in the shadows of dark, curling hair. His skin is just a bit more tanned than it was four years ago, and the angles of his face are more defined now. He's aged well. And yet…

He told her his story in the same soft, even tone that he'd used every other time they had spoken. His expression had been blank, as if he were relating something interesting that he had heard or perhaps a bit of useful intelligence. Not the story of how his country and his family and his life had been destroyed.

Marina does not hate, or, at least, she tries not to. Everyone is human, everyone deserves a second chance, that's what she's always been told, and what she's come to believe. But she's honestly not sure what she would do if she were to meet this Ali Al-Saachez. The very thought that this man is still alive is abhorrent to her, to a point that frightens her—she did not realize she was capable of despising someone, anyone, to this extent. She is a peaceful woman, or she wants to be one. Is one person's story really all it takes for her to give up on her principles?

And yet, it's not just any story. It's Setsuna's story, the story of a boy who has become important to her in a way that she can't quite define or explain. And that changes everything. No one should have to carry a burden like his, no one, but she especially doesn't want him to be the one to carry it. She wants desperately to be able to take it away from him, or lighten it somehow, but she's still powerless.

Except…she is almost certain that no one else has heard the story he just told her, not in its entirety. Setsuna is a private person, and one who has been taught never to show weakness. Under most circumstances, he wouldn't admit to struggling with his past even at gunpoint. But exhausted and injured, he entrusted his secrets to her. He trusted her in a way he had most likely never trusted anyone. That, by itself, is something meaningful.

He trusted…and he spoke about things that he normally avoided, and for good reason. To face painful memories like that on a regular basis. She's not sure even _he_ has that much strength. But he did need to face them, she knows that. Because if the past cannot be undone, and people cannot forget it, then the only option left to them is to accept it. She thinks, or maybe just hopes, that Setsuna moved a bit closer to acceptance today. The fact that she was able to help him to do that is a precious and wonderful accomplishment. Maybe the most meaningful one she's had.

As Princess of Azadistan, she spent countless hours alone in marble halls, feeling useless as the world fell to pieces around her. Here she is a refugee, without official rank or real authority, but she is still a ruler, in a way, of a tiny country of orphans that now includes Setsuna. It is not a glamorous position. It does not come with silken dresses or a grand palace. But it does come with other rewards—the sound of children singing and laughter in a place that is otherwise grim, the smallest hint of a smile on Setsuna's lips…certainly, not jewels or riches, but so much more precious than any currency or treasure ever could be.

It's strange, she thinks, that just by being Marina, the caregiver to a group of war orphans and a friend to a lonely, conflicted boy who was once called Soran, she can accomplish things that mean more than anything the Princess Royal of Azadistan, Marina Ismail, ever could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during Season 2 episode 15, "Victory Song of the Resistance," while Marina is taking care of Setsuna. Written because Marina never needed a title, and did better without one. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the female political figures of Gundam--but I like 'em competent--like Shirin, or Lacus Clyne of Gundam SEED. From her first appearance, Marina was presented as someone unsuited to her role--not necessary based on gender (with Ms. Sumeragi and Kati Mannequin acting as not just captains but generals, it's clear that this series accepts the idea of women as leaders/commanders) but based on her temperament and skills, which aren't suited to a political leader ruling a country in conflict. She seems happier and more suited to her role as child-minder/odd-jobs-doer for Katharon; I wanted to explore that.
> 
> Also, I like the combination of fluff and angst that I can generate with Setsuna and Marina.
> 
> Minor revisions have been made from the Fanfiction.net version. Thanks to StormyMonday for beta-ing.


	12. Self-Destruct

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dynames's self-destruct hadn't yet been activated, but Neil Dylandy's had.

Dynames has a self-destruct button, like any piece of advanced technology that's taken into battle ought to.

Neil remembered when Ian showed it to them, pointing it out very carefully on the schematics of each mobile suit so that none of them would push it unless it was absolutely necessary.

"And by that, I mean unless you're completely out of weapons, injured, and surrounded with no hope whatsoever of support from Ptolemaios or one of the other units," he had said. "These machines cost more than some countries spend in a year. If you blow one up, it'd better be for a dang good reason."

Tieria had scowled through the entire lecture, as if the very idea that he might destroy such a valuable piece of equipment under any circumstances less dire than the Apocalypse was an insult to him—which it probably was. Setsuna's expression turned distant a few minutes in, prompting Neil to wonder once again exactly what sort of things the kid was remembering. Allelujah had listened gravely, and, on reflection, Neil realized he was probably considering the very real possibility that he might need to use the button if he lost control of Hallelujah.

As for Neil, he wasn't much concerned about it. Well, it was useful to know where the button was, and he definitely didn't want to press it by accident, but it wasn't going to prompt some sort of deep introspection about what he would do if he was in a situation where that was his only option.

There wasn't much of a question about it, after all. Dynames's self-destruct hadn't yet been activated, but Neil Dylandy's had.

Specifically, it had been engaged three nights after the terrorist attack that killed his parents, in the alley behind a local convenience store, when, hands trembling half from cold and half from nervousness, he'd lifted a brand-new lighter to the tip of his first cigarette and then inhaled.

No matter what impression he had given his primary school teachers, he had paid attention in class, and he had seen exactly what cigarettes did to your lungs, and your teeth, and your mouth…they even screwed with your brain. But after the attack, he'd figured his brain was screwed up enough that a couple chemical stimulants weren't going to make much of a difference either way, and if his lungs shut down…well, to be honest, he wasn't sure he cared that much.

He'd gotten better, over the years, of course—he'd shrugged off the apathy, for the most part, and stopped the worst of the self-destructive behaviors; he hadn't picked an unwinnable bar fight in years, but never managed to kick the cigarette habit.

Some of it was probably just the nicotine…yeah, it made him feel good, and it calmed him down a heck of a lot faster than deep breaths. But he also had this suspicion that his self-destruct mechanism was still online, so to speak. The fact that he'd joined an armed organization knowing that ticking off pretty much every nation on Earth was _part of the plan_ was a pretty good indicator that something still wasn't quite right in his brain.

If he had really wanted to, he probably could have gotten some nicotine patches, and maybe some smokeless cigarettes or something, and tried to quit, but figured it wasn't worth the effort. It wasn't like he was smoking a pack a day or anything. Besides, he was a mobile suit pilot in an organization with enemies worldwide; if the cigarettes wanted to kill him, they'd have to get in line.

And so, leaning against Dynames's leg, staring up at the South African sky, he pulled his old, scuffed-up lighter out of the left pocket of his jacket, then reached for the last cigarette in the box at the bottom of his other pocket. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth, opened the lighter, and held it up to the cigarette's end. The smoke rose slowly toward the dark blue sky, a few orange sparks flickering within it, and he watched it rise for a few seconds before he breathed in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place sometime during season one. A slightly darker perspective on Neil's character than usual for me…hope you like it anyway. 
> 
> Beta-ed by StormyMonday.


	13. Message

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She deserved an explanation.

Setsuna's hands hovered over the keyboard, and he tried not to notice that they were trembling slightly.

There was a heavy feeling settled deep in his chest, and he knew that once he pressed the "send" button, it would settle even further. It would probably stay there…it would probably stay there until the moment he died.

It was harder now, facing death, now that he no longer believed in any deity who would welcome him to Paradise after he died. He was dying for a greater purpose, yes, but he would never really know if he achieved it…because he would be gone. There was no doubt that peace was worth the price he was about to pay, but he couldn't help being a little terrified at the thought of just not being anymore.

Maybe that's why he was sending this message to Marina. If anyone on this Earth outside of Celestial Being cared enough to remember a fool like him, it was her. She was something special, he was sure. Living on in her memory…it was so much more than what he deserved. But…he also wanted it, badly. In the end, there wasn't really much tying him to this world. Marina was one of the only people he could truly say he cared for outside of Celestial Being. She was also probably the only person outside of Celestial Being who cared for him.

She deserved this message, this explanation of what was about to happen and why he was choosing this path more than anyone else, because at the moment that he died, he was sure that his memories of her would be some of the last things he saw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setsuna's thoughts while writing Marina that message before Fallen Angels. You have Hideout Writer, a friend of mine on Fanfiction.net, to thank for this fic—he and I were doing a prompt exchange and one of the prompts he gave me resulted in this mini-oneshot.
> 
> Setsuna's thoughts on religion and metaphysics are not mine and do not reflect mine in any way. I'm Christian, he's a formerly Muslim (probably, I don't know if the series is ever really explicit about it) atheist--so yeah, there are differences.
> 
> This one was beta-ed by Stormy-Monday too.


	14. ~I'm doing this all for you, I'm doing this all for me~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Saji wondered who exactly he was doing this for.

_~I'm doing this all for you, I'm doing this all for me~_

The ring felt cold between the tips of Saji's fingers as he held it in front of his eyes and watched the fluorescent lights gleam on its surface. It was so small, so thin; the only thing connecting the life he had now to the life he had once imagined.

Sometimes, he wondered who he was doing this for, exactly. He kept telling himself that he was trying to rescue Louise from the A-Laws, to save her from the harsh life of a soldier. But, deep down, he wondered whether that was really the reason why he chased after her so desperately.

When the war had finally touched his life, it had ripped away his innocence, along with everyone he cared about. His sister, his girlfriend, even his reclusive neighbor, he lost them all to the conflict that had supposedly brought about an era of peace. And now, four years later, everything he'd believed about those losses was being turned on its head. His maladjusted neighbor was not a recluse but a soldier of Celestial Being, who were not the nefarious villains he had imagined them to be and weren't even responsible for half of what he had blamed them for. He was a fugitive from the A-Laws, now, and he was the one responsible for the massacre of a Katharon base, and now, he had even helped pilot one of the Gundams.

He was so thoroughly tangled in the war and conflict he detested that he had no idea how he would even go about escaping. And it was the same way for Louise—she was a member of the A-Laws now, as thoroughly trapped by the conflict as he was.

But under all the grief and anger, she was still Louise. And he was still Saji—he had changed a lot, but he had to believe that there were some parts of himself that had remained the same. And maybe, if he could find her, and they could be together, even for a little bit, maybe they would be able to return to the way they were.

It was a ridiculously naïve thought, he knew that. Too much had happened, too much had changed. But he wanted it so badly to be possible…he wanted those days back so desperately that it hurt. To wake up at a lunch table to find Louise scolding him for sleeping…to open a door and see her on the other side waiting impatiently for him to come shopping with her…to watch her nodding off in the middle of class…to have just _one_ of the experiences he had once considered "ordinary" back, he would've done anything.

He wanted to see Louise again, and he wanted a normal life, and sometimes those two desires got so tangled up in one another that he was no longer sure which one was driving him.

Was he trying to reach Louise for her sake, or for his own? Sometimes, he just wasn't sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not so much a SajiLouise shipping fic as a look at Saji's half of their relationship through season two and his motives during that time. Once again, inspired by a song—this time, it's _Egomama_ (Egoselfish) by Deco*27—the title is a line from one of the more popular English translations of the song.
> 
> Cleaned up slightly from the Fanfiction.net version, and beta-ed by StormyMonday.


	15. Nursemaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy Katagiri had never really expected that his primary societal function would end up being that of a nursemaid.

Billy Katagiri was familiar with the various permutations of the quote regarding mice, men and their best-laid plans. That said, he'd never really applied any of them to himself until now.

To put it more succinctly, he had never really expected that, despite all the time he'd spent on science and engineering classes, his primary societal function would end up being that of a nursemaid.

It hadn't been so bad when it was Graham. Well, perhaps that was simply the passage of time taking the edges off of his memories, but he didn't really think so. To be fair, Graham had been an utter trial at times—particularly when he had ingested caffeine or received a new mobile suit. He was loud, overdramatic, and his ability to think logically seemed to appear and disappear at random. Also, his various impassioned declarations regarding both his mobile suits and his comrades had convinced the largest part of the Union forces that he was insane, and caused many of them to additionally postulate that his and Billy's relationship was somewhat more than professional.

That had all been rather annoying, but Graham had possessed a number of redeeming qualities as well, and so, Billy had put up with him. And, when, after Fallen Angels, Graham had decided to shove him and everyone else away with all the subtlety of a beam cannon, Billy respected his wishes and given him some space.

Naturally, that had been when Leesa Kujo had quite literally landed on his doorstep. That is to say that she passed out, drunk, in front of his door.

He had feelings for her, there was no denying that, but watching her try to drink herself into an early grave did not exactly strengthen his affection for her. If anything, seeing her like this repulsed him. He wanted to get her help, but she wouldn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and whenever he forced her into a therapists' office, she shut down like a prisoner facing interrogation.

He tried to get rid of all the alcohol, but when he did that, she would just "borrow" his money and buy more. She'd barely spent five minutes sober for the first year after she arrived, and even after that, she never spent more than a few days without a drink. If she kept this up, she would die, but if she wouldn't accept help…well, he couldn't leave her alone when she was like this. So, he let her stay.

They weren't in a relationship; she wasn't ready for one. She was barely conscious enough for one most of the time. Graham would have laughed at him for it...he had a beautiful woman living in his apartment, but they weren't doing anything at all. Still, that was probably a good thing—Leesa was anything but stable and a relationship probably would've hurt both of them in the end.

She wouldn't tell him what had happened, beyond the fact that she'd been at Fallen Angels. He knew it hadn't been pretty, though. He heard her, sometimes, late at night, sobbing and managing to slur out "I'm sorry," in between tall whiskey shots.

He caught a few names, sometimes. "Lockon," "Christina," "Allelujah," and "Lichty"—he didn't recognize any of them, but the people who had borne them must have meant something to Leesa at some point. He didn't know what had happened to them…he didn't know anything, really, except that whatever had happened had been enough to break Leesa.

He wasn't sure if he still loved her…how could you have romantic feelings for a person who, by her own choice, wasn't usually even conscious enough to know where she was or who you were? But he did still care about her, so he couldn't give up on her.

He would have never guessed that his primary societal function would have been that of a nursemaid. And yet, he had never been able to abandon Graham, and he certainly couldn't turn his back on Leesa.

Well, if he was suited to the job, perhaps it was just as well that he was the one performing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I realize that this entire oneshot is an insult to Billy's masculinity. Unfortunately, what with that ponytail of his, I don't believe he has much left to insult.
> 
> Edited from the Fanfiction.net version, which was beta-ed by StormyMonday.


	16. What You Don't Have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, you’re not the only one who’s lost people, ya know,” Lyle said, a bit more harshly than he’d intended.

“Okay, Dad, I’ll be sure to send it to you when I’m done!” Milena chirped.

She smiled brilliantly at her father, who grinned back and ruffled her hair.  She giggled, then headed off to her next task, with Ian watching her go, a fond expression on his face.  Beside him, Saji Crossroad examined the Haro in his hands with great interest.

Lyle, watching them as he leaned against the wall of the hallway, could keep a twinge of jealousy off of his face, but not out of his thoughts.  He’d dealt with the loss of his parents and sister much better than Neil had, but he’d always felt their absence more keenly when surrounded by other people’s happy families.  It was part of why he’d joined Katharon—most of its members had lost their families too, whether to A-Law prisons or to death.  And there had always been an unspoken rule: you didn’t talk about what you didn’t have.

“Well, I’ll see you two later,” Ian said.  “I haven’t had time to eat for so long that I think my stomach’s forgotten what being full is like.  Saji, make sure that those repairs we talked about get done.”

“Yessir,” Saji said, straightening.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to loosen up a bit,” Ian said.

Saji shrugged.  “Have a nice meal, Mr. Vashti.”

Ian rolled his eyes, and then headed in the direction of the kitchen.  As the man left, Saji let out a soft sigh and slumped against the wall.  There was a look in his eyes, mournful and tired and a little lost…it was a little too familiar for Lyle’s tastes.

“What’s eating you, kid?” he asked, feigning casualness.

Saji looked up, startled.  “Ah, Mr. Stratos, I didn’t see you there!”

“You can call me Lockon,” Lyle said patiently.  “But seriously, what’s wrong?”

“Uh, it’s…that is…” Saji fumbled for words.  “It’s nothing anyone needs to worry about.”

“Uh-huh,” Lyle said, saturating the two syllables with as much disbelief as he could.

“Look, I just don’t like watching them,” Saji muttered, glowering down at the Haro in his hands.  “It makes me miss things I should already be used to not having.”

Lyle winced, and, without thinking, said, “You too?”

Saji blinked up at him.

“Hey, you’re not the only one who’s lost people, ya know,” Lyle said, a bit more harshly than he’d intended.

“Sorry,” Saji said quickly.  “The others mentioned that the other Lockon was—”

“My brother, yes,” Lyle said.  “But my parents and sister—” he broke off.  “Well, enough about me.  Who are you missing?”

“My sister,” Saji admitted.  “My parents died when I was younger; I still miss them, but…Kinue was always there at home, waiting for me…”

“Guess we’re both orphans, then,” Lyle said.  

“What are you guys talking about?” Allelujah asked, coming to a stop a few feet from them, with Setsuna close behind him.  “We didn’t mean to eavesdrop, we were just on our way to eat and…”

“Orphans,” Lyle said.  He saw Saji flinch, and regretted his bluntness.  But only a little bit.

“Huh…” Allelujah said.  “I wonder…”

“Wonder what?” Saji asked.

“I don’t remember my parents,” Allelujah explained.  “I…wasn’t raised by them.  Actually, I don’t even know their names.  For all I know, they are dead.”

Lyle had to make an effort not to stare.  It was no secret that the Arios Gundam’s Meister was a super-soldier, but Lyle didn’t really know much about what had gone on inside of the HRL’s Super-Soldier Institute before a Gundam blew it up—wait, hadn’t that Gundam been the orange one too?  Between that and four years in an A-Law prison, it was no wonder that Allelujah was kind of messed up.  Actually, it was a miracle that the man was still functioning at all.

“Wouldn’t their last name be the same as yours?” Saji asked.  “Maybe…after the war, that is…maybe you could look for them.”

“My last name was given to me by Celestial Being,” Allelujah said, almost gently.

“Oh,” Saji said, very quietly.

Lyle grimaced.  Saji had been living a pretty normal life up until he joined Celestial Being, from what he had said, so he probably wasn’t used to hearing crap like this.  It sort of killed your ability to feel self-pity when you discovered the guy you’d been eating lunch with for weeks had all but gone through perdition up to this point and that compared to his, your relatively crappy life was freakin’ peaceful.

“So, what about you, Setsuna?” Lyle asked, almost conversationally.  Changing the subject seemed like a good idea.

The younger man gave him a look that would have frightened seasoned mercenaries into running.  Fortunately, Lyle was a seasoned rebel, and just a little bit crazy to boot, so he didn’t scare that easily.

“C’mon,” he prompted.

“My parents are dead,” Setsuna said flatly, with that same terrifying look on his face.  On closer examination, it seemed to be made up of as much self-loathing as anger. 

Based on that, Lyle was pretty sure at this point that whatever story Setsuna didn’t want to tell was at least as bad as Allelujah’s, so he let it drop.

“Well, this is depressing,” Lyle said at length.  And awkward, he added mentally.  His brother had hung out with some really messed-up people.  But Lyle still kind of liked them…that probably made him just as crazy as Neil had been.

“Hey, uh, you want to come get something to eat with us?” Allelujah offered.  “There’s a table in the kitchen that’s the right size for four people…”

“I don’t know, I still have some repairs to do—” Saji started.

“I’m sure whatever it is can wait,” Lyle said.

To his surprise, Setsuna nodded in agreement.

“Okay, then, I guess…” Saji said.

“What kind of food is still left, anyhow?” Lyle asked.

“Mostly soup,” Setsuna said.

“Geez,” Lyle said.  “What about solid food?”

“We’re in space,” Allelujah reminded him.

Lyle let himself get drawn into the trivial conversation, drowning out his more brooding thoughts with complaints about food.  The conversation was a lot less lively than most he’d had with other members of Katharon, but still nice.  And he had a feeling that the food was going to taste a little bit better today, if only because he wasn’t eating it alone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for second-season spoilers and referenced death/mourning.
> 
> Yes, I'm finally writing something from Lyle's point of view. Honestly, he's not my favorite character ever, but he and Saji had a good dynamic in this fic. So, yeah, second-season Meister bonding! Tieria didn't want to participate, though...still, I think this turned out cute. It's set after they rescue Allelujah, but before Marie comes on Ptolemaios.
> 
> Beta-read by StormyMonday.


	17. Cell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allelujah wakes up in his cell after Fallen Angels.

He couldn’t see anything.  Not the faintest trace of light or the slightest gradient of shadow.  Maybe that head injury had damaged his visual cortex...although he wasn’t sure exactly how he’d gotten a head injury; that part was still blurry and indistinct in his memory.

There!  In the corner, he saw it, an area of shadows that was just a little more black than the area around him.

He knew he was sitting.  The room was cold, and the chair--metal, it felt smooth like metal—was colder, but at least he didn’t have to stand. And he couldn’t hear anyone else’s breathing but his own.  Still, the soft echoes of his gasping breaths were slightly unnerving, and it was still really, really dark. 

He ached, especially because there was something holding his arms to his chest…oh, no.  It was a straightjacket.  He was in a straightjacket.

The memories of Fallen Angels were clearer now.  He’d been injured and captured, and, apparently, brought here.  Wherever here was.  But wherever here was, it was a place he couldn’t leave.  Because he was in a straightjacket.  And, come to think of it, he could feel something cold against his legs, through the flimsy material the pants he was wearing were made of.  He tried moving a leg.  They had his legs cuffed to the chair he was in.

And that weight, the one over his mouth…some sort of mask…what the heck did they think he was going to do, bite someone?  But he couldn’t move his arms to remove it.

It was like the Institute all over again.  He couldn’t leave, couldn’t escape, they were going to hurt him…

He started panicking, murmuring incoherent prayers under his breath as he tried not to hyperventilate and failed.  Defeated, he waited for Hallelujah to seize control.

Except that he didn’t.  He didn’t even speak up to comment on Allelujah’s weakness.  It was as if he was gone.

And then, Allelujah remembered Hallelujah saying things that sounded like dying words.  Somehow, that injury had…oh no.

Bound and shackled in a dark room and alone in his head for the first time in years, Allelujah Haptism screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: spoilers for the end of season one, horror, disturbing things from canon
> 
> Writing this freaked me out. Poor Allelujah.
> 
> Beta-read by Stormy-Monday


	18. Illusive Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Allelujah thought he could remember his parents.

Sometimes, he thought he could remember his parents.

When he tried to remember them, he could feel a large, warm hand wrapped around his own.  The sound of language he couldn’t remember how to understand buzzed in his ears, and he could taste the dust in the wind.

He could almost call up the image of a thin, brown wrist emerging from a loose cotton sleeve, or of a flash of gentleness that shone in dark eyes.  The smell of cheap, over-scented soap tingled in his nose.  Sometimes, he could almost picture faces.

And then, he’d realize that the warm hand had Lockon’s calluses, and the unknown language was one he’d heard on a recent intervention, to a country where the breeze tasted of dust.  He’d realize that the thin, brown wrist looked a little too much like Setsuna’s, and the dark eyes were Ian’s, set in a more appropriately-colored face.  The cheap soap, he’d smelled on a trip to Earth a few months back.  And the faces were never more than muddy, blurred outlines with his own basic features, all the blanks left empty because he had no real memories to fill them.

There was nothing.  He couldn’t remember anything of them, not even their names, no matter how much his mind managed to build from odds and ends.

He wondered about them, though.  Whether his mother was kind, or strict, or both; whether his father would approve of his actions or think he’d taken the wrong path.

He thought his mother might be someone like Marina Ismail—calm, peaceful, and beautiful, untouched by the chaos around her—but with the air of experience that Ms. Sumeragi had when she was sober.

His father, he thought, was probably like Ian Vashti, tough, smart, dependable and a little grizzled, but still a doting father and husband.

He liked to imagine that they had other children who hadn’t been taken by the Super Soldier Institute.  Younger ones, still innocent and playful, who would keep his parents busy and stop them from missing their lost son.

…if they even missed him.  Maybe they didn’t.  It was possible that he’d been a difficult child, or a foolish one. 

Or maybe the circumstances had been such that they couldn’t afford another child?  A lot of people in the world were poor and starving; maybe his parents had been in that situation too.  Losing a mouth to feed would have been a blessing, in that case.  Maybe they even let the Super Soldier Institute take him.  He couldn’t remember the circumstances; for all he knew, he’d been offered up willingly.

But he didn’t want to believe that.  Because, despite all his sins, all of the murders that he’d committed, he was horrified by the idea of giving up a child of his—even though he didn’t have any and didn’t even know if super soldiers could have any—to anyone while he still lived.  He wanted to believe that his parents felt the same way.  He wanted to believe that he was missed.

Since he was probably never going to find out, either way, he figured that he could allow himself that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fabricated memories aren’t uncommon even for those of us who aren’t as incredibly messed up as Alle. If your parents or guardians have told you a certain story about your very young childhood over and over again, you can probably ‘remember’ it in a sort of fragmented fashion. This is because your subconscious has constructed it out of other memories. You know it happened, and that you ‘should’ remember it, so your brain makes it so you ‘do’ remember it—even though the memory isn’t actually of the event, it’s still probably pretty accurate if the story it’s based on is detailed enough. The same thing might happen if you have a relative you’ve only met once or haven’t met at all, but have heard lots of stories about—despite not really remembering them, you’ll have a sort of foggy mental image of them compiled from memories of others who look somewhat like how you imagine the person.


	19. Ordinary World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of Kinue Crossroad.

Kinue wakes up at six, while Saji is still asleep, and gulps down coffee and a bagel in her car on the way to the office.

The moment she gets there she’s on the computer, checking her email and various social media sites for potential stories.  By the time she’s got a shortlist, it’s eight o’clock and the editorial meeting is starting.

Ideas fly in rapid volleys across the conference table, each reporter defending their own and trying to eliminate the others they dislike.  From the fray, eventually, something like the outline of a paper emerges.

Kinue leaves the meeting buzzing with triumph because one of the stories she put forward is getting in, and the elation lasts all of five minutes until she realizes how many interviews she’s going to have to do to put the story together.

She dials the first number while she’s sliding into her desk chair, and waits for the computer to wake up as she listens to ring after ring and draws spirals in the margins of her notepad.  The first person she interviews is great, the second doesn’t answer, the third has a recorded message on their phone about their four-week trip to the Bahamas, and the fourth is reading off of the press release she already has.

She types up the interview transcripts between bites of lunch—her little brother makes the best bentou—and checks the internet again for updates.  There’s nothing, so she reads a few articles online before coming back to the quotes and starting to sort them into something like a story.

She sends the first draft out at two, then starts on another assignment.  Her editor sends it back at four with a boatload of suggested changes.  She manages to finish all of them before running out the door and promptly getting stuck at traffic.

When she gets home, Saji is just putting a pan of stir-fry onto plates, while Louise inspects the finished product and complains about all the weird vegetables Japanese people eat.

She takes a deep breath, and leaves all of the stress of the day beside the door with her shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of experimenting with writing style here. I tried to express the hectic nature of Kinue’s life and also the comfortable predictability of it.


	20. Sleepless

The suffocating grip of dreams of acrid smoke and keening screams finally loosened, hours before the sun rose, and he stumbled out of his apartment, hoping to find some sort of peace in the ordered rhythm of his own heavy footsteps.

The hallways were clean and modern and metallic, and he kept imagining them twisted and stained red within curtains of smoke…he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, even as he pressed the button for the elevator.

It was so small.  How had he never noticed how small it was?  If anyone ever thought to put a bomb in it, there wouldn’t even be pieces of the riders to find.  It felt like a death trap.

Finally, he made it out, out of the elevator, out of the hallway, out of the building.  The coolness of night air shocked him, waking him from the hazy half-sleep of drifting through bad memories.

He looked up, and saw stars, faint above city lights, but there nonetheless.  They were still there.  And he was still here.  That hadn’t changed.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, and scrolled through the contacts, warmed somehow by the faint light it gave off.

For a second, he thought about calling Louise, but decided against it.  They’d seen the bus explode only days ago; a late-night call would make her worry.

He could have died.  They both could have died.  But they hadn’t.  And he was sure the nightmares would fade.  He would be able to hold on to his own everyday life, even as the world fell to pieces around him. 

He didn’t really care what happened to the world, anyway. Kinue and Louise were his world, his own bright spots in a sky too dark and vast for him to comprehend…and, his sleeplessness was scrambling his thoughts a little.  Louise always said that late nights made him goofy…

Sighing, softly, he walked back into the apartment building, hoping that he’d manage to get back to sleep before his alarm clock went off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place sometime after "Indiscriminate Retribution."


	21. Accidental Couch-Surfing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An exhausted, disoriented Setsuna ends up passing out on Saji’s couch.

Setsuna stumbled down the apartment building’s hallway half-blind, vision obstructed by flashes of memory.  Adrenaline was racing through him, left over from the armed intervention, pumping in time with the drumbeat of the music playing in his headphones.  Lockon had given him the music player, and loaded some songs onto it; right now, the driving beat and screeching guitars were the only thing anchoring him in this place and time.

His mind was trying to drag him back to Krugis again, back to explosions and gunfire and belief dying piece by piece.  The intervention this time had been in Africa, putting down an attempted coup d’état, and Setsuna had tried not to scream when he saw the enemy carrying guns that were practically as tall as them.  Dressed in too-big uniforms and too small to withstand the recoils of the rifles they carried…too familiar.  It was all too familiar.

The music had changed, now a soft, steady drumbeat backed up a plaintive voice.  He tried to focus on it, but the eyes of the children they’d fought kept blurring into the eyes of his former comrades, even though all of them were certainly dead now.  The adrenaline was ebbing now, leaving behind it a deep, heavy exhaustion…he felt like collapsing on the spot, but that would be too conspicuous—he had a few feet to go before he made it to his apartment, and if he could hold out that long…well, it wouldn’t be the first time he fell asleep on the doormat. 

Of course, going to sleep when his mind was like this probably wouldn’t end up being too restful, but at least his muscles would probably ache less when he woke up. Finally, between two flashes of memory, he caught sight of his door.  He let himself pitch forward to lean on the door as he rummaged through his pockets for his key.  He tried to ignore the way his hand was shaking—probably more exhaustion than the fear attached to the flashbacks—and to get the key into the lock, but he ended up dropping the key.

Taking a deep breath, he knelt to pick up the key, trying to push the memories out of his mind at least long enough to get his door open.  The drumbeat in the song he’d been listening to was joined by wailing guitars as he tried to close his trembling hand, aching and cramped from hours of clutching a throttle, around the key. Finally he managed it and stood back up, legs shaking as well—yes, definitely exhaustion. 

“Setsuna?” he heard, very faintly, through the music still filling his ears.  He pulled one of the earbuds out of his ear and turned around, to see Saji Crossroad looking at him with concern in his eyes.

He swore inwardly.  The last thing he needed was a suspicious neighbor. Or, really, a neighbor who noticed him in general.

But Saji seemed very intent on noticing. He was fiddling with the shoulder strap of his schoolbag and worrying his lower lip, just a little.  He was still dressed in his school clothes—that made it sometime around three, Setsuna thought.  It was nice to know for sure—the memories were more than a little disorienting.  Actually, beyond the time, he wasn’t even quite sure of what month it was…the information was buried somewhere at the back of his mind, too far to reach.

“Setsuna, you don’t look so good,” Saji said.

Setsuna didn’t respond.

“You shouldn’t be alone, not like that,” Saji said.  “Come with me.”

By the time Setsuna was actually aware that he was following orders from Saji, of all people, he was halfway into the Crossroad apartment. Somewhere along the way, Saji had caught him by the elbow, and had started to guide him toward the couch.  Some part of Setsuna still wanted to twist away, but he was too tired to actually act on the impulse. Saji was a civilian, not a threat.  He wouldn’t hurt Setsuna, and even if he wanted to, he wasn’t strong enough.

His memories were still mixing themselves with the present… he remembered that it was Saji holding onto his arm, but sometimes he saw an Azadistani soldier beside him instead…he wasn’t sure where he was being taken or why, in either case.  His vision was blurring, his limbs felt heavy, and his steps were clumsy and unsure. 

Disoriented, he pitched forward, and when he landed on something soft, he quite simply stopped caring where he was or who had brought him there.  The thought of the sleep was far too inviting.  He closed his eyes and surrendered to dreams.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Saji fumbled through his schoolbag, looking for his key. Finally finding it—somewhere between his wallet and a bundle of pens—he unlocked his door.

A soft gasp caught his attention.  Looking up from his lock, he saw Setsuna F. Seiei crouched in front of his own apartment, his hand shaking as he attempted to pick something up.

Actually, it wasn’t just his hand shaking. Tiny, sharp tremors were racing through his neighbor’s small body, in time with the boy’s shaky breaths.  His eyes were half-open and bloodshot, smudges of shadow underlining them.  His scarf was slipping off of his shoulders, and his hair was messy and tangled.  He looked _awful_ , Saji decided. 

Setsuna had picked up whatever he was trying to retrieve, and was rising to his feet, with no small amount of effort.  His eyes were completely unfocused, and his hand was shaking even more than before as he moved it toward the lock on his door— _oh, it was a key that he was trying to pick up,_ Saji realized. Unfortunately, he was missing the lock almost entirely. 

Saji wasn’t especially fond of Setsuna, but he didn’t hate the guy either.  And it was becoming pretty clear that something was really wrong with his reclusive neighbor.  There was no way that Saji could just let Setsuna go home to an empty apartment when he was clearly about to pass out.

“Setsuna?” he ventured.

His neighbor’s expression took on a very strong resemblance to the one that Kinue always had when Saji caught her with romance novels, one made up of equal parts of surprise and embarrassment, with a side of desperation for the person to _stop looking_ added in.

Saji was not about to oblige, though, especially not when Setsuna just stared blankly at him for a few seconds before his eyes lost their focus again, and he wavered on his feet.

“Setsuna, you don’t look so good,” Saji said.

Setsuna didn’t respond—no, he didn’t even react.  It was as if he hadn’t heard, and while he was wearing headphones, the music shouldn’t have been able to drown out Saji’s voice that completely.

“You shouldn’t be alone, not like that,” Saji said, getting more worried.  “Come with me.”

He walked over to Setsuna, cupping a hand around the smaller boy’s upper arm and guiding him towards the Crossroads’ apartment.  And Setsuna—touch-shy Setsuna, who usually maintained about a yard’s worth of personal space between himself and everyone else—didn’t even try to pull away.

Setsuna was no longer simply wavering, he was stumbling now, barely staying on his feet.  Saji quickly ushered him into the apartment and towards the couch.  A few steps before they reached it, Setsuna’s knees buckled and he lurched forward, too fast for Saji to even hope to catch him.  Fortunately, his head and most of his upper body landed not on the carpeted-concrete floor but on the edge of the couch.  His knees, on the other hand, were probably going to bruise.

Now, Saji was panicking.  His neighbor was unconscious on…well, mostly on his floor, and it wasn’t like he’d ever taken a first aid class.  Engineering students didn’t take first aid.  Why would they?  They were in charge of putting machines back together, not people. All they had to know was how to stop bleeding, and maybe how to operate a defibrillator if a co-worker was electrocuted and their heart stopped.  But Setsuna wasn’t bleeding, and that hadn’t looked like a heart attack, not that there was a defibrillator in the apartment, anyways…he needed to focus.

Kinue would still be in the newsroom at this time of the evening, so she wouldn’t be answering her phone and he couldn’t rely on her for help. Crap.  He was going to have to do this on his own.   

Okay, so what did he do?  Setsuna’s back was rising and sinking, just slightly, so he hadn’t stopped breathing or anything.  He wasn’t bleeding, either.  Before he could forget, he removed the headphones from Setsuna’s ears and turned off the music player, then set the whole thing on the coffee table, along with Setsuna’s key, which had fallen on the floor.

He took a few breaths, then attempted to get Setsuna into a somewhat comfortable-looking position on the couch.  This was both easier and harder than he’d expected—easier, because Setsuna weighed practically nothing, and harder, because it was really, really awkward to have to move around his neighbor’s unconscious body.

He finally maneuvered most of Setsuna onto the couch when he heard something fall.  He looked down, and saw his reflection in the glossy-black casing of a small, cheap cell phone.

_Setsuna’s?_ he wondered.  _It must be.  It’s definitely not mine or Kinue’s_.  Carefully, he flipped it open, and pressed the “on” button.  Maybe there would be an emergency contact on here, somewhere…scrolling through the contact list, he had no such luck.  In fact, there were only a few numbers…then, his eyes landed on a name spelled out in phonetic characters…

“Rokkuon?” he read aloud.

It had to be a nickname.  And a nickname meant a close friend.  Maybe close enough to come over and help him.  He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and called the number.

They picked up after the first ring.

“What is it, Setsuna?” a low, male voice asked.  It was speaking Japanese, but there was a definite accent to it—something vaguely English, Saji thought.

“Seriously, kid, I’m a little busy right now,” Rokkuon said, his tone sharp.  “What’s going on?”

“Hello, uh—” Saji asked.

“You’re not Setsuna,” Rokkuon said, his voice turning from sharp to practically edged.  “Who are you and how did you get this phone?  Where is Setsuna?”

“H-he’s unconscious…” Saji stammered, startled by all of the questions.  _What kind of person is this guy, anyhow?_ he wondered.

“What did you say?” Rokkuon asked, his voice flat and cold, with the promise of pain implied by every syllable.

“He’s unconscious!” Saji repeated.  “He was going to go into his apartment and he looked really awful, so I brought him over to my place and he passed out on my couch!”

“Who are you?” Rokkuon asked again, but this time, his tone was more confused than threatening.

“I’m his neighbor,” Saji said. 

“Too bad,” Rokkuon said.  “I was hoping you were a date or something.”

“A-a date?” Saji managed.  “I-it’s not like that at all!  I have a girlfriend and—wait, is Setsuna gay?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rokkuon replied.  “I thought maybe you did.  Oh, well.  You say he’s unconscious?  Is he hurt?”

“Not that I could see…” Saji said.  “I didn’t really check, though.  I just made sure he was still breathing and moved him onto the couch.”

“And he didn’t wake up?” Rokkuon asked.  “Geez, he must be sick.  He’s usually a light sleeper—picks up on the first ring if you call him at two in the morning.” 

“He didn’t really feel like he was running a fever, though,” Saji said.

“I don’t think he has any health conditions…wait, let me check,” Rokkuon said.  “Stay on the line, okay?  I’m gonna make another call.”

The phone went silent, and Saji was left waiting, kicking his feet absently against the crossbar of his chair as he stared at his unexpected houseguest.  Setsuna didn’t look much calmer in sleep than he did awake, and the shadows under his eyes looked even more awful on close inspection than they had initially. 

“Nope, no health conditions,” Rokkuon said, making Saji jump. “Some old malnutrition and injuries, but nothing that would make him pass out like that.”

“You sure?” Saji asked, even as he wondered, _Malnutrition?  That explains why he’s so…tiny, but I wonder how it happened…_

“A friend of mine and Setsuna’s does records where he works,” Rokkuon said.  “I had him pull them up.”

“Oh...” Saji said, a little impressed.  “Thank you.”

“It could be overwork,” Rokkuon mused.  “I think today was a tough day for him, and I’m not sure how much sleep he’s been getting.  Listen, would you mind keeping him at your place for a while?”

“Uh, I guess…but he doesn’t seem to like spending time around people,” Saji said.  “Once he wakes up, he’ll probably leave.”

“Try and talk him into staying,” Rokkuon pressed.  “He lives alone, and he’s clearly not up to looking out for himself right now.  Letting him stay there by himself when he’s sick would be a bad idea, I think.”

“Right,” Saji said.

“Oh, and be careful when he wakes up,” Rokkuon advised.  “He might be kind of disoriented, and he tends to react badly if you surprise him…just stand back a little; I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean by—”

“Sorry, gotta go!” Rokkuon interrupted.  “I’m afraid I’m at work, and we’re getting a bit of a rush.  Take good care of Setsuna, Setsuna’s neighbor!”

The phone let out a little beeping sound to let Saji know he’d been hung up on.  On the couch, Setsuna stirred in his sleep.  Saji barely kept in a groan.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Setsuna woke out of a dream of a long-ago battlefield just as his ammunition was running out.  As usual, the dream didn’t quite end when his eyes opened, leaving him confused about where exactly he was and what his situation was.  Eyes still heavy with sleep, he attempted to sit up, to find a weapon, to run, to do something…and found that he could barely move his limbs.  There was something heavy on them, something pressing down…half on instinct, he tried to pull free from whatever it was and found it instead wrapping around him, trapping his arms against his body. 

Something was pressing down on his chest—on his whole body, actually, and it was heavy enough to impede his movement.  His pulse sped up in tandem with his breathing, and small, white spots appeared in his vision.  He wasn’t getting enough oxygen…what was happening?

He tried to sit up again, and, this time, he had a bit more success.  The surface he was laying on was soft and pliable, and moved under his weight, even as what had been keeping him down slid partially off of his upper body.  He slumped forward in relief, taking deep, gasping breaths until he no longer felt as though he was suffocating.  As the horrible breathlessness ended, his vision cleared, and he looked down at …a particularly overstuffed quilt.

“Setsuna?” asked a familiar voice.

Setsuna looked in the direction it came from, and saw Saji Crossroad paused in a doorway, a blue-and-white quilt draped over his left arm and a bowl filled with brown liquid cupped in his right hand.

The boy immediately rushed towards him, placing the bowl on the coffee table—this was Saji’s apartment, wasn’t it?—and then sliding onto the edge of the place where Setsuna was lying, which appeared to be the couch.

“How are you feeling?” Saji practically demanded, leaning towards Setsuna with a worried look on his face.  “You’ve been out for three hours, at least.”

“Out?” Setsuna asked, attempting to locate an explanation for all of this in his memory, and finding little but blurred images of the apartment building’s hallway and an extremely detailed catalog of the day’s armed intervention.

“You passed out,” Saji said. “On my couch.  Well, only about halfway on it, really…but you get the idea.”

“I’m fine,” Setsuna said brusquely, trying to swing his legs off of the couch and finding his own exhaustion to be as much an obstacle as Saji, who was still seated on the couch’s edge.  “I need to go back to my apartment.”

“I don’t think so,” Saji said.  “You still don’t look so good, and you live alone.  If you passed out or something, there wouldn’t be anyone there to find your or call an ambulance.”

“I’m just tired,” Setsuna said.  He was pretty sure that was the truth.  Well, kind of sure…to be honest, he was too tired to focus on determining whether he was just tired or whether he was also sick.

He’d just eat an MRE, find a blanket to sleep on, and ask Mr. Al Saachez to check his temperature in the morning…

  1.   Wait.  That wasn’t right.  He hadn’t eaten an MRE in years, there was a bed in his apartment—he had an apartment!—and if Ali Al Saachez tried to take his temperature the correct response would be breaking the man’s hand.  And then his face.



If he wasn’t thinking straight, it was probably better to be somewhere where he was under supervision.  Especially since Saji seemed pretty set on keeping him here anyway and he wasn’t too sure he could remember enough Japanese to argue with him right now.

His eyes started to close, but Saji’s voice startled him awake again.

“You should eat before you go back to sleep,” Saji said, holding out the bowl of soup.

Setsuna picked up the spoon carefully, vaguely remembering shaking hands and a key he couldn’t seem to grip.  But his hand showed most of its normal dexterity, and he was able to get the spoon to his mouth without incident.

The soup didn’t taste right.  Soup was supposed taste of spices and salt, and maybe very faintly of vegetables.  This soup tasted like beef and sugar and carrots, with just a hint of spice in the background.

Saji must have seen his expression.  “It’s _nikujaga_ —Japanese beef stew.  Not what you’re used to, huh?”

Setsuna shook his head.  “But it’s not bad,” he said, taking another spoonful, then holding out his hand to take the bowl.

Saji hesitated for a second, then handed it to him.  Setsuna made short work of it—years of never being sure when the next meal would be had taught him to eat quickly.

This seemed to please Saji, who took the bowl and set it on the coffee table, then asked, “Would you like a different quilt?  This one’s a little less heavy.”

Being able to move his arms and legs sounded good to Setsuna, so he nodded.  “Thank you,” he added.

“Don’t worry about it,” Saji said, pulling away the overstuffed quilt and replacing it with the blue-and-white one he had draped over his arm.

At some point during this process, Setsuna ended up lying down again.  He wasn’t sure just when.  But he knew that by the time Saji was walking away to rinse out the soup bowl, his eyes were falling shut.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Kinue Crossroad opened the door of her apartment and was immediately hit by the sweet, slightly spicy smell that belonged to Saji’s _nikujaga_.

“I see you’ve already made dinner,” she called out, searching the kitchen area for Saji as she took off her shoes.

Saji emerged from the back hallway and raised a finger to his lips. Kinue obeyed, but raised an eyebrow in curiosity as she shrugged off her coat.

Her brother glanced towards the couch, which she saw was mostly covered in a blanket, with a curly-haired head barely peeking out of one side. 

Saji whispered an explanation as she hung up her coat.  When he was finished, she smiled proudly at him.

“Good job, little brother,” she said softly, patting him on the back.

“Thanks,” he replied, beaming.  “Now, let’s eat.”

They talked quietly over dinner, glancing every so often at their guest, who slept fitfully under the quilt Kinue had helped their mother piece.

“Guess he has nightmares,” Saji whispered.  “I’d wake him up, but he needs the sleep.”

Kinue nodded in agreement and blew on another spoonful of _nikujaga_ before putting it in her mouth.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Setsuna didn’t wake again that evening, but when Saji and Kinue got up the next morning, he was gone.  The quilt was folded neatly on the couch, with the pillow sitting neatly on top.  Setsuna’s phone, music player and key were all gone.

Other than the quilt and pillow, the only evidence that the apartment had held an extra occupant the previous night was a note, written on the legal pad they usually kept in a drawer near the videophone.

It was sitting on the coffee table now, open to a page with “Thank you for your hospitality” scrawled on it in messy _hiragana_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nikujaga is a type of Japanese beef stew that is sweet rather than salty and is considered somewhat of a comfort food. The story is that a Japanese noble who had tasted Western beef stew asked his cook to make some and the cook came up with nikujaga, which is completely different, but the noble liked it anyway. And for those of you who haven’t been into anime long enough to start trying to learn Japanese, hiragana is one of the three alphabets used in the language. It’s made up of phonetic characters (characters that stand for sounds), and while it’s part of everyday Japanese writing, the only ones who use it exclusively are those who don’t know kanji (which are ideograms, or characters that stand for ideas) such as young children and those still learning the language. Since the Gundams’ computers appear to be written largely in English, my headcannon is that Setsuna’s speaking ability in Japanese is far ahead of his writing ability; thus, the hiragana. The song Setsuna was listening to at the beginning of the fic was "Ash Like Snow," in case anyone wonders.
> 
> Beta-read by Sybil Rowan.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is slowly being edited and reposted from Fanfiction.net. Originally, I wasn't going to bring it over anytime soon, but recently, there was an incident that caused me to consider taking down part of the fic on FFN due to a site issue that FFN support took too long to fix. If something like that happens again, I want the fic to be backed up someplace I trust to be responsive when I have issues.
> 
> Please search my psued/penname on FFN to find the full fic, in the meantime.


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